Football: An eventful day

I had an eventful day at Cal last week, first joining Marvin Jones for a live chat and then taking a tour of the Student-Athlete High-Performance Center.

The tour was fascinating. There is still a lot of work to be done but you can see the potential. It should be quite a facility. It’s still on track to open in October.

The part I found most impressive was the high-performance core. This is the area, almost 19,000 square feet, that will house all the facilities and equipment for all of the athletes from the 13 sports that will call the SAHPC home. It will have weightlifting equiptment, a cardio room, agility room and offices for doctors, trainers, strength and conditioning coaches and nutritionists. There will also be a fitness studio for such things as plyometrics, ballet, dance and yoga.

Other features include a couple of sports science labs, medical rehab rooms a therapy pool and a medical clinic. There will also be a small swatch of field turf for athletes to work on agility and cutting, etc.

One other interesting feature is an underwater warm therapy pool. It includes an underwater treadmill for therapy, rehab and cardio training. There will be an underwater camera as well for athletes and trainers to review rehab and see such things like if he or she is favoring one side, etc.

The SAHPC essentially is divided into three areas — football, the high-performance core and the Olympic sports. The Football area, which is adjacent to the North end of Memorial Stadium, includes coaches offices, position meeting rooms, game planning rooms, a video room and a broadcast studio and press room. The locker room is located one floor below. A stairway runs from the locker room, past the floor with the offices and straight to the North tunnel of the stadium. This is how players, coaches and staff will get into the stadium for practices and games.

The Olympic area essentially is a mirror image of the football area, with coaches offices on one floor and locker rooms underneath. Each of the 12 Olympic sports have a private locker room, with all the women’s sports being on one floor and the men on another.

Some other notes about the SAHPC:

There are still some trees that will be preserved after the construction is complete. That includes a couple of trees the tree-sitters called home. Estimations are that about 25 percent of the existing landscape will remain intact.

Seventy percent of the facility is underground. Workers had to dig a hole about 42 feet deep before building.

There is a lot of wood flooring and natural light coming through. That was by design, as Cal didn’t want athletes to feel they were being housed in an underground dungeon.

And now for some visual evidence:

Jonathan Okanes

Jonathan Okanes is in his fourth year covering Cal's football team. Previously, he covered Cal's men's basketball team for four years. He can also be followed on Twitter at twitter.com/OkanesonCal.

thanks for the report, sounds very cool! i had to turn down a friend’s invite to visit as a +1 this week and was very sad. will the offices for olympic sports that are currently in haas be moving to the SHPC? wonder what will go into those offices…

I sure hope Cal allows Bear Backers to take a tour of the entire facility. It would take a good while, but would be a public relations bonanza.
And they shouldn’t just open the tour to the largest of backers, but all fans. Today’s small fries become tomorrow’s whales.